To kick off Privacy Awareness Week (PAW) and Information Awareness Month (IAM2021), InfoGovANZ is delighted to release the 2021 IG Industry Report, revealing information governance trends particularly within the Australia and New Zealand region. This is InfoGovANZ’s third survey collecting the opinions of practitioners and industry participants charting the development of information governance over the past five years. The survey engaged 338 participants and highlights the status, priorities and challenges of information governance for organisations in 2021.
The IG Report highlights that implementing and maintaining an IG framework is the most important priority for organisations for nearly half of industry professionals, with the three main enterprise-wide drivers of IG projects identified as external regulatory, compliance and or legal obligations(74%); good business management practices(68%); and internal technology restructuring or transition(50%).
“While only one in five respondents indicated that COVID had been a driving factor for IG projects, there was a notable increase since our last survey in data breaches, lawsuits and investigations acting as a driver for IG projects – particularly in the corporate sector” said Peter Chapman, KPMG Director, Forensics Technology expert and InfoGovANZ Advisory Board member. “This finding aligns with the increased reporting of ransomware attacks and data exfiltration activity observed on the dark web over the last two years. Attackers are certainly more active and the expansion of organisational IT boundaries to accommodate large scale remote working has provided additional vectors of attack for cyber-criminals.”
“Fewer participants indicated that privacy regulatory changes, such as the GDPR, CCPA ,New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020 and Australia’s NDB Scheme had been a driver of their current IG projects” said Susan Bennett, InfoGovANZ’s Founder and Executive Director. In line with the 2019 results, corporate respondents were more likely to indicate the new privacy regulatory environment is largely driving their IG projects when compared with government respondents (43% versus 17.5%). Susan Bennett explained, “this is likely to be due to a greater number of corporate respondents handling personal information of EU data subjects and dealing with cross-border transfers of personal data as a result of the GDPR, CCPA and New Zealand’s Privacy Act 2020.”
Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said their organisation uses a formal IG framework with policies and procedures, which was a substantial increase on 2019. Almost three-quarters of the respondents’ organisations have IG projects underway or planned in the next year, with over a third indicating they are expecting to increase their IG spend this financial year. Susan Bennett said, “IG appears to have matured since our initial 2017 survey, with almost two-thirds assessing their IG programs as intermediate or advanced in maturity and more respondents considering their organisation having a proactive IG stance than a reactive one.” Despite this overarching finding, the majority of respondents from corporate backgrounds felt their organisation was taking a reactive IG approach, which could be attributed to the changes in the business landscape from COVID-19.
Susan Bennett said, “It’s pleasing to see that more than half of respondents feel that their organisation has addressed leadership in IG and data, but there is still room for improvement here noting that it is a requirement for all Australian Federal Government agencies to have a CIGO. We have also seen a consistent increase in the percentage of respondents indicating their accountable IG person is a peer of the C-suite.”
The report also shows a consistent increase in the percentage of respondents indicating their accountable IG person is a peer of the C-suite. In contrast, only 42% of respondents indicated their organisation has a multidisciplinary IG steering committee, which overwhelmingly correlates with a proactive IG approach.
“Highlighting why an enterprise-wide approach is needed, 27% of respondents indicated they didn’t know how many projects their organisation had undertaken in the past year and a third of IG professionals believe their organisations haven’t given sufficient training and knowledge to contribute effectively to IG activities.”
“This highlights the need for an enterprise-wide unified information governance strategy and that best practice IG requires all areas responsible for managing, protecting and using data and information to collaborate closely to achieve the overarching organisation strategic objectives and priorities.”
Key Survey Highlights:
- Implementing or maintaining an IG framework was identified as the most important priority for nearly half of industry professionals.
- The three main drivers of IG projects are external regulatory, compliance or legal obligations (74%), good business management practices (68%), and internal technology restructuring or transition (50%).
- Nearly two-thirds of respondents said their organisations use a formal IG framework with policies and procedures.
- Almost three-quarters of respondents said their organisations have IG projects underway or planned in the next year.
- Over half of respondents said recent changes to privacy regulations had had some impact on their current IG projects. However, there seems to be an overall reduction in privacy laws driving IG projects.
- One in five indicated that COVID-19 was a driving factor for IG projects.
- Over half assessed their IG programs as intermediate or advanced in maturity.
Key Survey engagement:
338 industry professionals engaged with the 2021 IG Industry Report.
The Survey was distributed through affiliate associations to include a broad range of professionals:
- Government Agencies Information Network (GAIN) Australia
- Records and Information Management Professionals Australasia (RIMPA)
- Data Management Association (DAMA)
- Australian Litigation Support Managers (ALSM)
- Institute for Information Management (IIM)
About Information Governance ANZ
Established in 2016, Information Governance ANZ brings together professionals from different disciplines across all types of organisations to develop and promote information governance best practices and innovations. By building a network of multi-disciplinary professionals, information silos will be broken down, enabling connected thinking and innovation that leads to information governance best practices. This, in turn, will promote the delivery of better outcomes for organisations by both minimising risk and maximising the value of the information held within organisation.
The report can be access here - Information Governance Industry Report 2021 - InfoGovANZ.
For further information
Please contact Susan Bennett, Executive Director via email at susan.bennett@infogovanz.com or on +61 2 8226 8546.
