Information Policies and Strategies

Citation

Ryan, D. (2012), "Information Policies and Strategies", Records Management Journal, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 77-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/09565691211222162

The topic of this book is both timely and important for information managers, who in the modern workplace are asked to support organisations constantly challenged by fast moving changes to information technology and the new practices it affords. The development of a conceptual framework for the work undertaken by teams in all sectors would be most welcome, especially if contained within a short book like this, recently produced to “widen their awareness”.

Practitioners outside of central government policy makers, however, may find themselves disappointed. The real focus of the book is the government or its agents in public authorities of any kind and in the introduction it is declared amongst other statements that “governments are […] the greatest consumers of information”. This may or may not be true, but as a claim it most certainly needs supporting evidence. Yet it is this group of statements that lead the author to define the information society as revolving around or being fundamentally influenced by government activities and being carried out in a public space that exists only with constant tensions between the individual and the state. Business is given little attention and the arguments presented about the relationship between the public authority, commercial interests and the citizen appear confused (see pp. 68‐9).

The book clearly states its aim is to interest “other readers” beyond librarians, and despite the fact that many of the issues addressed in the book are more normally faced by archivists and records managers (for example data storage as a result of increased state data gathering mentioned on page 127), their role is not discussed at all. This may be because the author and the book's publishers, Facet, the commercial publishing and bookselling arm of CILIP, wish to address their domestic audience, but it also certainly reflects the continuing fragmented state of the information “profession”, where an entire constituency is ignored, although expert in key aspects of the subject under consideration.

The author is an academic and the tone of the book is straightforward and the order well structured, as perhaps the text was developed from lectures to students. Despite this, there are no footnotes and the reading list is disappointingly out of date. It is most unusual for a book published in 2010 on a “hot” subject to not include any works later than 1995 in its references.

Perhaps the main problem with any discussion of information policy theory is that, as poignantly stated on p. 57, “information polices about the internet so far show little sign of effective adaptation to the new medium”. And it is the internet which is the cause of many, if not most, of the conundrums facing those who need to develop effective information polices today.