RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF GOVERNANCE

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RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF
GOVERNANCE

• By
• Azman Mat Isa
• Humanities Advanced Technology
• Information Institute (HATII)
• Glasgow University

2
RECORDS MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF
GOVERNANCE

• Research background
• Research questions
• Research method
• Governance
• Corporate governance
• Government e-Government
• Records management
• Accountability
• Risk management

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Research Background

• Records play a crucial role in most human
  endeavors and they are essential to all of our
  business and social interactions. Records are the
  basis of our legal system. Government functions
  and accountability, medical treatment and
  scientific research all depend on them (Duranti,
  1998).
• Specialists in records management often state
  that records have to be preserved for the
  accountability, but they rarely explore what
  accountability is and what role these records
  play in accountability processes (Meijer, 2001).

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Research Background (contd)

• Ironically, research shows that some areas of
  public administration are reluctant to embrace
  the contribution records management can make to
  good governance and accountability (Meijer,
  2001).
• It is important to tease out the nature or
  ontology of records so as to understand their
  importance in ensuring accountability. This
  research is carefully designed to investigate the
  way in which records fulfill this role.

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Research Background (contd)

• What are these?
• WorldCom
• Enron
• Lord Hutton Inquiry
• Dr Harold Shipman
• Australian government in 1980s
• Is there any relationship between records
  management, trust, risk, transparency and
  accountability?

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Research Questions

• Are records being created according to the way
  they should be created?
• What role do records play in the accountability
  processes and the management of risk?
• Why is records management not regarded as
  essential for good governance, public or private?

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Research Method

• Case studies
• NHS Greater Glasgow Health Board
• Life Insurance Company in Edinburgh
• Strategic overview
• Private sector vs. public sector

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Governance

• Governance is about processes, not about ends.
  It is about the process by which power and
  authority is exercised in a society by which
  government, the private sector and citizens
  groups articulate their interests, mediate their
  differences, and exercise their legal rights and
  obligations.
• (Fukuda-Parr and Ponzio, 2002)
• Governance is a process for reconciling the
  ambitions of the individual or group with the
  need to preserve and develop a common weal
  which binds through shared interests. (Davies,
  1999)

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Corporate Governance

• Corporate governance is a system by which
  business corporations are directed and
  controlled. (OECD, 2004)
• A view emerged that traditional governance was
  not capable of coping with a rapidly changing
  work environment which produced new challenges
  and threats to accountability in the early 1990s.

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Corporate Governance (contd)

• Corporate governance promotes corporate fairness,
  transparency and accountability.
• Corporate governance does not guarantee success
  and sustainability of organisations, however, it
  does provide a better approach for organisations
  to demonstrate transparent and accountable
  governance. (OECD, 2004)
• Corporate governance in the private sector is
  different from that in the public sector.

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Government

• A trusted government is one that can demonstrate
  its accountability and transparency and is
  continually striving to improve value delivery
  and increase cost-effectiveness.
• FoI suggests that governments need to be more
  transparent and accountable for their actions and
  decisions.
• Openness and transparency are set to replace
  traditions of secrecy and deference.
  (ONeill,2002)

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E-Government

• e-Government is a generic term that refers to any
  government functions or processes that are
  carried out in digital form externally over the
  internet and internally over intranets.
• For e-Government to work effectively and
  efficiently, it is essential that the public have
  access to accurate and authentic information.
• First and foremost we must capture maintain
  accurate records!

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Records Management

• Poor recordkeeping attracts corruption like flies
  to a carcass. (McKinnon, 1994)
• Reliability and authenticity of electronic
  records are mainly assured through procedural
  means. (Duranti, 2001 and InterPARES, 2001)
• ISO 15489 compliance globalisation.

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Accountability

• Accountability can be achieved by
• Compliance with the law and internal external
  regulations
• Fulfilling auditing requirements
• Response to challenge. (Shepherd Yeo, 2003)
• To support accountability requirements,
  recordkeeping systems must be designed to ensure
  the creation of adequate records and their
  capture, maintenance and accessibility over time.
  (Upward, 2000)

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Risk Management

• The process of analyzing exposure to risk and
  determining how to best handle such exposure.
• Balance score card - a new way to assess how well
  their organization is functioning, how to predict
  future performance, and how to align the
  organization toward new strategies to achieve
  breakthrough performance.
• What role can records management play? Not
  merely operational!

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In a nutshell

• Good corporate governance is more crucial in the
  public sector than the private sector as
  governments are directly accountable to the
  members of the public.
• Strategic approach to records management is vital
  to facilitate recordkeeping and retrieval.