First organisation wide government information management policy
2018.10.20
At the Dutch governmental body in control of social securities for the jobless, we introduced a new organisation wide policy for information management, covering all types of information. The toughest parts were coverign the currently ungoverned information and finding an owner.
Now that this journey is completed, I leave this organisation and move on to others to help them make a step forward in organisational development.
The Dutch "Uitvoeringsinstituut WerknemersVerzekeringen" (UWV) is tasked to provide people with an income who have lost their jobs and help them to get new work as soon as possible. Helping out over 300.000 new jobless every year with 18.000 people, information is the key to just about all of the business processes.
While governments have their primary processes, their reason for being, largely in order, the internal organisation usually is not mature. This is mainly due to priority setting and budgetary decisions. Getting information about human resources processes, IT processes, internal meetings, audits, risks, real estate and so on is hard and getting this information in order just as much.
Reality is catching up on such organisations because every now and then a new news item points out the weaknesses, for instance when private data has been leaked, or a malfunctioning uncovered that has led to significant loss of money in terms of failed IT projects or fraud with public funds. Now that the European GDPR is in place, it's mandatory to take care of various internal processes to prevent at least part o these issues from taking place.
For this organisation, we now have a policy carried on the highest level and to be carried out on every level. It transcends all systems, processes and departmnets. It will be implemented as of next year by a group of people that is yet to be formed. But already it's changing the internal organisation.
This is setting a precedent for a law that has yet to be enacted that requires exactly this setup. It means that the experience and insights will be important to document and to share with the other governmental bodies.